References to KISS in other media.
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Anime & Manga
- Aggretsuko: Whenever she's enraged, Retsuko's face changes to look similar to Gene Simmons' KISS face paint, featuring similar black marking around her eyes and an Overly-Long Tongue.
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, the Stand of secondary protagonist Ermes Costello is named Kiss, to accompany the endless bevy of other music references found within JoJo.
Films — Live-Action
- Bat Without Wings: The titular Serial Killer of this wuxia movie would go on a killing spree while painting his face to resemble Gene Simmons from KISS. In the Ming Dynasty.
- Dazed and Confused: A couple of characters steal some statues and paint the faces to make them look like KISS.
- Metal Lords has Hunter donning the Demon's facepaint as Warpaint.
- Role Models has in one scene "Love Gun" being played and its not well hidden subtext.
- In The Spirit of '76, one of the boys wears a KISS patch on his outfit.
Literature
- Newspaper columnist D. L. Stewart recounts, via his book Fathers Are People Too, how one of his sons was a fan of the band, and explained them (including showing him a trading card of Gene Simmons) after Stewart complained about the volume on the record he was playing. Songs namedropped in the scene in question include "Cold Gin", "Rock Bottom" and "Ladies' Room". Stewart apparently had a low opinion of the music, comparing it to alley cats yowling.
- In The Half-Life of Planets, Hank plays KISS covers with some middle-aged men from his workplace, who were in a KISS cover band in high school and enjoy reliving their youth. They put on costumes and makeup and perform at Beachfest as Music from the Elders.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Band Candy" the students discover that someone has tagged their lockers by painting "KISS rocks!". Willow is briefly confused over why anyone would kiss rocks.
- The Muppets Mayhem: The first episode opens with the band performing “Rock and Roll All Night”.
- That '70s Show:
- In "Drive-In", Kelso gets a KISS alarm clock that plays the chorus of "Rock And Roll All Nite", but replaces the word "party" from "party every day" with a stilted voice saying "Wake up".
- In "Red Sees Red", Red insists upon putting Eric on a strict curfew, arguing how without it, he'd go off the rails, imagining him turning into the Demon. The episode ends with Kitty, the Demon, and Charo singing "Sunrise, Sunset" on the set of Kitty's variety show.Red: Why, oh why, didn't I discipline you?Demon!Eric: Shut up and eat your corn flakes!
Music
- The Cheap Trick song "Surrender" has the line "Rolling numbers, rock and rolling, got my KISS records out." During live shows, the band would toss KISS albums to their audiences.
- They also get mentioned in Weezer's "In the Garage".
- Kiss My Ass, from 1994, is an entire album of KISS songs covered by other artists. Little tip for J-Rock fans: Yoshiki performs "Black Diamond" in it. Little tip for country fans: Garth Brooks does the lead vocals on a straight version of "Hard Luck Woman", with Kiss themselves as his backing band.
- Kiss My Ankh is a 2008 album consisting entirely of covers of songs written or co-written by Vinnie Vincent.
- In the liner notes to Jellyfish's debut, Bellybutton, Steve McDonald (of Redd Kross) is credited as having "played bass, breathed fire and spit(ted) blood".
- The Melvins released three solo EPs in 1992, all with covers homaging the KISS solo albums from 1978: King Buzzo is based on Gene Simmons; Dale Crover is based on Peter Criss; and Joe Preston is based on Ace Frehley.
Sports
- Nicolas Nadeau performed to "I Was Made for Lovin' You" as an exhibition number
during the 2019 Canadian Figure Skating Championships.
Video Games
- One of the battle banner decorations in Clash Royale, named "Kissable Faces", depicts four goblins wearing face paint blatantly taken from the members of KISS, and is accompanied by the following description:"Any similarity to real bands (or tongues) is purely coincidental."
- Pokémon: The Galarian variants of Zigzagoon, Linoone and their line-exclusive final evolution, Obstagoon, which were introduced in Pokémon Sword and Shield, have appearances that highly resemble the getup and face paint worn by KISS members, especially Gene Simmons. Simmons himself likes it, having said, "To see Pokémon pay homage to KISS, is flattering."
- One of the Koopalings introduced in Super Mario Bros. 3 is Morton Koopa Jr., whose white face with a black star around an eye is a clear Paul Stanley homage.
Web Animation
- In the RWBY Chibi segment "Boy Band", while Sun, Ren, and Neptune all dress up in glam band attire, Jaune is seen wearing latex face paint, and has this to say when the others call him out on it.Jaune: This is totally cool. Like that classic rock band, SMOOCH! Or for the younger generation, the Lunatic Jester Brigade! ...If you like terrible music.
- In Red vs. Blue, the Simmons equivalent in the Blues and Reds is called Gene.
Webcomics
- Hark! A Vagrant: KISS elves make questionable shoes. They later moved to Santa's workshop where they continued their trend.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons:
- In "Homerpalooza", Homer gets weirded out by 90s music, telling Marge "I used to rock and roll all night and party every day. Then, it was every other day. Now, I'm lucky if I can find half an hour a week in which to get funky."
- In "Pray Anything", after acquiring the Springfield Church, Homer sings and dances along to "I Was Made For Lovin' You".
- In My Dad the Rock Star, Rock Zilla is an obvious parody of Gene Simmons (who created the show) And KISS themselves are mentioned in "Chip Off The Old Rock."
- Family Guy
- In "A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas" Peter watches "KISS Saves Christmas" amd later gets it as a gift at the end of the episode.
- Peter and Lois' plot in "Road To Europe" has them attending a KISS concert.
